


to be human is a haunting

by evewithanapple



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: In the end, maybe that’s why she tells him after all; because he went through it all before and ended up significantly the worse for wear for it, and she doesn’t want to do the same.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman
Comments: 21
Kudos: 59
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	to be human is a haunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coaldustcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/gifts).



> Takes place in some handwavey future where the gang's all back together (Quyn included) because I say so.
> 
> Trigger warnings for descriptions of cancer/dealing with the death of a parent.

She should have learned by now not to check Facebook. She should have learned it years ago, back in her senior year of high school when all she used it for was to scroll through her ex’s profile and snivel over pictures of him and his new girlfriend. But at least then, her mother’s room was just across the hall, and she could always go and cry on her shoulder when she needed to. Nowadays, it’s . . . not _impossible_ to find someone to lend an ear (sometimes it’s all too possible, with the six of them living on top of each other and constantly in each others’ business) but even _having_ Facebook is severely frowned upon as a major security risk. Which, well, it kind of is.

So she keeps her Facebooking to a minimum and never lets on to anyone else. Doing it on her phone helps – Andy still hasn’t graduated from flip phones, Quynh’s only just discovering cell phones as a concept, and while the guys all have smartphones, they haven’t yet worked out how to connect them to Wifi. So nobody who sees her curled up on the couch, phone in hand, is going to guess that she’s flouting all their security rules just to catch up on what’s happening with her friends from high school.

It’s during one of these surreptitious scrolling sessions that it happens. She’s thumbing through the newsfeed, noting her cousin’s new dog, her roommate’s drama-filled posts about her ex, whichever MLM her aunt just signed up for when a post of her brother’s catches her eye: “Nia Freeman Cancer Fund” with the little GoFundMe logo in the upper left-hand corner. She blinks rapidly as she presses her thumb down on the screen thinking, surely it’s not the same Nia Freeman – she has dozens of aunts and cousins and in-laws, it must be one of them. But then the page loads and it’s her mother’s face at the top, the same face that still comes up whenever Nile turns on her phone. She remembers the day that picture was taken: Fourth of July, 2017, right before she shipped out for boot camp. A picnic table in Washington Park, squinting into the camera with her stupid novelty sunglasses pushed back on her head.

She knows reading the rest of the page is a bad idea, considers giving in anyway, and compromises by skimming it. She mechanically absorbs _breast cancer, stage three, insurance coverage_ ; then she hits _gold star family_ and it’s too much, she has to stop. She gets up off the couch, jams her phone in her back pocket, and stumbles off towards her bedroom. Nicky looks up from his book and says, “Nile - ?” as she passes, but she can’t look at him.

Alone in her room, she curls up on the bed with her knees pressed against her stomach and a fist ground against her mouth. She feels like she’s had the wind knocked out of her, which is a stupid way to feel, because she _knew_ this was going to happen eventually – hadn’t they all warned her? – but she hadn’t expected it now. It’s only been eight years; her mom is only – fifty-five? Fifty-six? Then she realizes she can’t remember her mother’s birthday anymore, and that more than anything is what tips her over into sobbing into the pillow, wounded animal sounds tearing themselves out from the back of her throat.

No one comes in to check on her while she’s crying, a fact for which she is extremely grateful. She knows full well they can hear her – the walls in here have the consistency of cardboard – so someone (probably Andy) has made the executive decision that she isn’t to be bothered. She’s free to cry until she feels empty and wrung-out, eyes aching and muscles cramped from how long she’s spent curled up in a ball. She stays where she is, though, because . . . well, it’s not like there’s anything else for her to do besides go back out and pretend everything’s normal. And while she could do that, it’s more effort than she really has the energy for right now.

When someone does finally come in and settle themselves on the bed next to her, she doesn’t look up. She doesn’t even realize who it is until they say, “ _Ça va_?” and she realizes it’s Booker.

“Fuck off,” she says, not opening her eyes. “I don’t feel like a French lesson.”

“It’s not a lesson,” he says, sounding mildly offended, “it’s one of the first things I taught you. If you don’t remember that, I think you might be a hopeless case.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” she says again, but with a bit less rancor. She kicks one foot out at him, and he grabs it and tries to flip her with his elbow around the back of her knee. She yelps, scrabbling at the quilt for purchase and finding none, then gives up on escape and lets her weight drive her own elbow forward into his stomach. He lets her go with a grunt, and when she sits up, he’s lying on his back looking at her with an expression of deep betrayal.

“Serves you right,” she says with a sniff. She could go back to the position she was in before, but it seems like too much effort – which, she realizes belatedly, was most likely his plan to begin with.

He blinks up at her, still fully on his wounded deer bullshit. “You started it.”

“Yeah,” she says, “and I’ll finish it, too.” But she doesn’t have the energy to back up her threats, so she just falls back on the pillows. “What d’you want?”

Booker apparently gives up on guilting her and sits up, arms tucked behind his head. “Andy wants us all in the living room in ten. Team meeting.”

“New job?” It’s not the worst news in the world. A job would be a distraction, at least. On the other hand, in her current frame of mind, she runs the risk of getting herself shot at least half a dozen times out of sheer inattention.

“Probably,” he says with a little half-shrug. “You up for it?”

She’s truly tempted to brush it off with a “why wouldn’t I be?” and a shrug, go out into the living room and carry on like nothing’s happened. It’s not like she’s never bitten her tongue through bad times before. She’s a professional. She can _handle_ it.

But what actually comes out is a long sigh and an “I don’t know.”

Booker says nothing. It’s one of the reasons that, on reflection, she’s glad he came looking for her instead of the others – Joe and Nicky are sweethearts, but they would absolutely keep pressing until she told them what was wrong. Andy and Quynh, who are both significantly less cuddly, would probably just tell her to get up and get moving. Booker’s the only one willing to just sit there in silence and wait it out.

Which he does. For five minutes. His patience outlasts Nile’s, probably because he has nothing specific on his mind and she feels like her brain is actively shoving at the sides of her skull trying to get out. “It’s just some bad news,” she says. “From home. I’ll be . . .” She trails off. “I’ll deal.”

Still, he doesn’t say anything. He pats her shoulder instead. “If you say so.” And they leave it at that.

* * *

She really, truly, didn’t intend to let on anything more than that. For starters, it would mean admitting that she’s still keeping tabs on her family. For another thing, she knows she couldn’t handle the sympathy. And for yet _another_ thing, it feels cruel to dump this on Booker, of all people. What good would it do besides bring up bad memories for him and encourage her to keep on wallowing?

In the end, maybe that’s why she tells him after all. Because he went through it all before and ended up significantly the worse for wear for it, and she doesn’t want to do the same. Because he remembers in a way that the others don’t what it felt like. Because she’s scared to say it out loud, but she’s even more scared not to.

It comes out in bits and pieces, over months. She keeps on checking Facebook, even though she knows she’s sticking dirty fingers in an open wound. Her mom doesn’t have a profile, but her brother and aunts do, and they’re all posting constant updates. In and out of the hospital, good news followed by setbacks, pictures of her mom with her head wrapped in a variety of brightly patterned scarves. _My daughter picked this one out_! her aunt writes under one of them and yep, that tracks; the eye-searing orange and green print is exactly the kind of thing Jasmin would pick. Not the kind of thing her mom would ever select for herself, but she would also never let her niece know as much.

Then Nile remembers that, of the two of them, at least Jasmin as sitting at her mother’s bedside and buying her scarves. That cuts down on the sense of superiority pretty quick.

Scraps of information, doled out piecemeal without any rhyme or reason – from his perspective, anyway. Maybe he guesses that she only coughs these things up when it’s been an especially rough day, a really bad bit of news. If so, he doesn’t let on. He just sits next to her on the couch, at the kitchen table, sometimes in her room. Takes her silence on without complaint. If the others notice how quiet she’s gotten (and how could they not?) they don’t mention it, though she does sometimes catch Nicky frowning at her like he’s trying to solve a puzzle, notices that Joe always squeezes her a little tighter like he’s trying to hug the smile back onto her face. Andy and Quynh are less of a concern, partially because they’re so wrapped up in each other – Nile doesn’t blame them, after all these years and with Andy’s clock running down- and partially because it’s just not their way. Andy’s content to let her work through it (whatever “it” may be) herself, since that’s clearly what she wants. Quynh, who’s only known Nile for two years now, takes her cues from Andy.

They play a lot of card games, her and Booker. She still remembers the old standbys, Old Maid and Go Fish and War, and he teaches her old-ass games that haven’t been popular since Queen Victoria was alive. Écarté, Skat (“like jazz music?” she asks, eyebrows raised), Bezique, and Skwitz. Some of them require a bit of finessing to fit two players, but they manage. They bet on beer caps and pencils and pieces of candy, and sometimes turn to drinking games if they’re tired and slap-happy enough. Not often, though; he steers her gently away from alcohol on the days when she can’t quite hide her grief. She thinks of the stories the others tell sometimes, the kind that family members of alcoholics get used to sharing as funny anecdotes instead of tragic ones (“remember that time in Mozambique when he started a bar fight with eight guys? We had to drag him out before they noticed he was healing . . .”) and doesn’t blame him. Mostly.

“My grandpa taught me this one,” she tells him as she deals cards for Canasta. “He and his friends used to sit on the stoop and play it all day. Drove my mom crazy when she was trying to get in and out of the apartment.” His eyes flick up when she mentions her mother. She swallows hard and tries to pass by it. “They bet on it, too. It was the only rule the pastor had that he didn’t follow. He said if God had an issue with it, he could tell him himself.”

Booker huffs a laugh. “Never understood that.” He takes a stack of cards from her and shuffles them, which doesn’t offend her; he does it every time. “The rules about gambling, I mean. Seemed pointless.”

Nile sits up, cross-legged, and fans her cards out in her left hand. “Aren’t you Catholic?” she says absent-mindedly as she scans her hand.

She’s surprised when he bursts out laughing – a real laugh, not just a chuckle. “No,” he says, once he’s recovered enough to speak. “No, Nile, I’m not Catholic.”

“But you’re French,” she says, looking up from her cards with a frown. Neither geography nor world religions was ever her forte – although her knowledge of the former has improved over the last decade of globe-hopping – but she remembered that, at least. France had cathedrals, Catholics, and croissants. Possibly her regional knowledge was a little too reliant on stereotypes.

“I am, yes.” He sets his cards down. “And the year I was nineteen, the Constituent Assembly confiscated all church property and declared that it belonged to the government. By the time I was twenty-three, public worship had been forbidden and Catholicism declared counter-revolutionary.” He shrugs. “I never felt strongly about it either way, so it was no hardship to give up. And even after the revolutionary government fell, I never went back. So no, I’m not Catholic. I’m not anything.”

Nile mulls over this for a long moment. “But if nobody was religious, then – “ She hesitates.

He looks at her, eyebrows raised. “Then what?”

“Then . . .” She chews on her bottom lip. She just realizes she’s accidentally stumbled into some really fucking personal questions, which hadn’t been her intent, and while she could back out if she wanted to – he wouldn’t push – she’s already teetering too close to the end. She takes the plunge. “What did you think would happen when you died?”

She’s thinking about the pictures in her history textbook, of the long lines at the guillotine and heads dropped into baskets. She’s thinking, too, of Booker’s long march into Russia and his first death at the end of a rope. What had he expected to see on the other side?

What does _she_ expect? If she ever gets the chance to see it, what will her afterlife look like?

He sighs. “You’d be better off asking Nicky questions like this.”

“I’m asking you.” Now that she’s started, she can’t stop; her mind is a snowball rolling downhill, picking up every stick and rock and piece of dirt on the way. Headed straight for the abyss, whatever that looks like.

“Fine.” He rubs his chin. “I guess the short answer is, we didn’t. Everything was too . . . busy.” He huffs another brief laugh. “The thing about being in constant fear of your life is, you don’t have much time to think about anything else. It takes up a lot of energy.”

She nods.

Then she bursts into tears.

“Oh, no, Nile – “ He drops his remaining cards and leans across the bed, making a mess of the hands she just deals so that he can scoop her up and cradle her against his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have – _ça va bien se passer_ , _tu vas bien_.” She hangs onto his shirt and cries and cries.

When she can string a few words together, she gasps out, “They told us – we thought – my mom, she thinks –“ She sniffles. She’s gotten tears and snot all over Booker’s shirt, and it’s absolutely disgusting. “She thinks when she dies she’ll see and my dad again but I won’t _be there_ –“ And she chokes and starts sobbing again in earnest.

“Oh, Nile.” Both his hands are resting on her back; they’re so big, they almost span both her shoulders. “Nile. It’s okay.”

“It’s not!” She bangs one of her fists against his shoulder, too feebly to too any damage. “You told me, when it was you, you said – “

“Nile. Listen.” He takes her face in his hands, presses his forehead to hers. “ _Listen_. No parent wants to outlive their child, never.” His right pinky finger is pressed to the pulse under her jaw; she can feel her heartbeat throbbing against him. “Your mother would never be disappointed to know you’re still alive. I promise you. I _promise_.”

“I left her,” she gasps, still clutching tight to his shirt. “I left and now she’s – _alone_ –“

“She’s not.” He squeezes her a little tighter. “You told me yourself, remember? She’s not.”

And he’s right, she’s not. She has Nile’s brother, and her sisters, and her cousins – ugly scarves and all – and her friends. She’s never been alone in her life, not that Nile can remember. But still –

“It’s not fair,” she whispers. Her sobs have died down, leaving a hollow ache in her chest that won’t go away.

“I know,” he says, rubbing her back again. “I know.” And he doesn’t say anything else, because there’s nothing more to say.

* * *

It takes almost a year and a half for the end to come, but it doesn’t get any easier in the interim. The pictures on Facebook become fewer and farther between, and the ones that do get posted can’t hide the grey tinge to her mother’s skin or the hollows where her face had once been round. Her brother posts less; the updates she’s come to expect about campus life and football games segue into terse sentences about another weekend spent in the hospital, thanks to professors who give him extensions on assignments, and the occasionally rant about the American healthcare system.

(When she’d originally spotted the GoFundMe she’d called Copley and told him to dump money into it – anonymously, obviously, but enough to make sure her family wouldn’t want for anything. He’d done so, and raised several points in her estimation by never bringing it up again. As with Booker, she has a silent understanding with him. His wounds, too, are still raw.)

Her aunt is the one who makes the announcement; it spreads out in ripples from her, the same post shared over and over by family members too numb with grief to write their own. Nile reads it once, then slams her laptop shut. The words _reunited with her husband and daughter_ knocked the wind out of her, though her conversation with Booker is never far from her thoughts – it’s one she tugs out and holds close whenever things get too hard. But she doesn’t want to dwell on it now.

She marches out into the living room instead. Joe and Booker have gone out shopping, but the other three are scattered around the chairs. “I need something to do,” she announces. “Cook something, clean some weapons. What is there?”

All three look up at her. Quynh is the first to speak. “I found a set of knives in the storage room that need sharpening,” she says. “Here, I’ll show you.” And she leads Nile to the backyard, where she spends a blessedly mindless hour running each knife against the whetstone until just grazing the edge is enough to make her thumb bleed. The noise reminds her of the manual pencil sharpeners of her childhood classrooms, and it’s loud enough to drive everything else from her thoughts. She might be exerting slightly more pressure than necessary, but the knives _are_ pretty dull.

She’s so absorbed, in fact, that she doesn’t realize Booker’s home until she looks up and sees him sitting in one of the lawn chairs, watching her. She yelps, dropping the knife. “Jesus, you could have said something!”

“Sorry.” He holds both hands up. “I didn’t want to disturb you. Quynh said I’d find you out here.” He pauses. “You okay?”

She reaches down slowly to pick up the knife she dropped and set it back in its case. Then she shuts the lid of the case (slowly) and flips the latch shut (still slowly, although there’s a limit to what she can do there.) It’s only after that that she crosses the lawn to sit on the ground by Booker’s chair, leaning against his knee. “It’s over,” she says, staring at the ground. There’s an ant crawling up a blade of grass next to her foot. She extends a finger and watches as it crawls up and across her nail.

“I figured,” he says, and she doesn’t wonder how. Probably he saw it on her face. It’s something they share now, this silent grief. Something they can recognize at fifty paces. She sees people in the street now and thinks _you too, and you_. She couldn’t say what it is she recognizes, but she never feels uncertain about it.

Booker somehow manages to slide down out of the lawn chair and onto the ground next to her, and in spite of herself, Nile laughs – he looks like a slinky. He grimaces when he lands, then reaches over to put an arm around her. She relaxes into the half-embrace, and he squeezes.

“I don’t feel anything,” she whispers. “I think my tank’s empty.”

“For now.” He kisses the top of her head, then rests his chin there. “Not forever. It’ll come.”

The ant is back on the ground, crawling away. Nile clenches her empty fist. “Does it have to?”

He left out a rueful half-laugh. “Afraid so.”

Nile sniffles. Booker shifts wrapping his other arm around her in a full-body hug. He runs hot, and it’s a balmy afternoon; she can feel sweat gathering at the nape of her neck. It should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. She kind of likes the sense of being smothered just now.

“Hey,” she says against his chest. “Thanks.”

He just kisses her head again and tightens his grip. “I got you.” And they sit there in silence as the dark begins to fall.


End file.
